ROAD TRIP WITH FEW SURPRISES

From 1940 to 1953, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby teamed for a series of "road pictures" - zany, enormously popular comedies with titles like Road to Morocco and Road to Utopia.

These half-dozen films plus a seventh latecomer - The Road to Hong Kong of 1962 - are the uncredited inspiration for The Road to El Dorado, DreamWorks' latest animated adventure.

Instead of Hope and Crosby, the new film - which opens today - features the hard-headed Tulio and the semispacey Miguel, early 16th-century Spanish grifters whose voices are provided by Kevin Kline and Kenneth Branagh. After accidentally stowing away on a ship bound for South America, our heroes stumble upon the mythical golden city of El Dorado - where the natives mistake them for gods.

Aided by a horse and an armadillo, the trio attempt to bamboozle the local chief (Edward James Olmos) and high priest (Armand Assante) into showering them with gold.

After that, Tulio and Miguel were planning to get the heck out of El Dodge - er, El Dorado. But the longer they stay in the mythical city, the more Miguel comes to like the place and the more Tulio comes to like Chel.

The Road to El Dorado was co-directed by Eric "Bibo" Bergeron (who worked on The Adventures of Pinocchio and The Goofy Movie) and Don Paul (The Prince of Egypt) from a script by the team of Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio (Aladdin, The Mask of Zorro). The executive producer is Jeffrey Katzenberg, the point man for animation at DreamWorks, whose other honchos are Steven Spielberg and David Geffen.

Although clearly an homage to the old road pictures, the new film lacks their goofy spontaneity.

The witty exchanges in those old films grew out of the chemistry between Hope and Crosby, who sometimes ad-libbed their lines. Kline and Branagh are accomplished actors, but you can't just artificially create a great comedy team.

I liked Miguel's lecherous tiger growl at the thought of Chel - a good imitation of Hope's trademark. But this might have been a very different - and much funnier - movie if, say, Billy Crystal and Robin Williams had done the heroes' voices, with maybe Whoopi Goldberg speaking for Chel.

That said, the film that we have is no worse than the bland kiddie flicks that the Disney studio had devolved into making just before The Little Mermaid came along and revived the form. You know, less-than-classic productions like Oliver & Company and The Great Mouse Detective.

The Road to El Dorado is boderline entertaining, I suppose, with animation that is, at times, truly impressive. And if the six Elton John/Tim Rice songs are thoroughly forgettable, they lack sufficient distinction to actually become annoying.

In general, the film is innocuous enough for most kids although there are flashes of naked cartoon male hinies in a bathing scene and some mild cussing. There's also some cartoon violence: In a scene that recalls Spielberg's Jaws, a shark chows down on an innocent seagull.

One curious thing about this movie:

In the old road pictures, Hope and Crosby typically fought over Lamour. But Miguel's tiger growl aside, only Tulio really seems interested in "getting the girl."

When Tulio and Chel become an item, Miguel takes it unusually hard - but not because he's sorry to have lost his chance with Chel. He's just angry that Tulio has become involved with a woman.

This development may not be Hope and Crosby so much as Siegfried and Roy.